Rumors of his brother’s amorous affairs drifted home to Eli from time to time. He had cast off the parish clerk’s daughter, Tamsin Eva, and was after a farmer’s young widow in St. Levan. Now he had quarreled with the widow and was to be seen in Trewellard courting a mine captain’s daughter. Again he had put the miner’s daughter by, and St. Ives gossips were coupling his name with that of the wife of a local preacher and making a great hoity-toity about it—and so on. It was impossible to keep track of Ortho’s activities in the game of hearts.
He came home one morning limping from a slight gunshot wound in the thigh, and on another occasion brought his horse in nearly galloped to death, but he made no mention of how either of these things came about. Though his work on the farm was negligible, he spent a busy summer one way and another.
Pyramus was down by the eighth of November, and on the night of the fourteenth the ball was opened with a heavy run of goods, all of which were safely delivered. From then on till Christmas cargo after cargo was slipped through without mishap, but on St. Stephen’s day the weather broke up, the wind bustled round to the southeast and blew great guns, sending the big seas piling into Monks Cove in foaming hills. The Cove men drew their boats well up, took down snares and antique blunderbusses and staggered inland rabbiting.
Eli turned back to his farm-work with delight, but prosaic hard labor had no further attraction for Ortho. He put in a couple of days sawing up windfalls, a couple more ferreting with Bohenna, then he went up to Church-town and saw Tamsin Eva again.
It was at a dance in the long room of the “Lamb and Flag” tavern and she was looking her best, dressed in blue flounced out at the hips, with a close-fitting bodice. She was what is known in West Cornwall as a “red Dane,” masses of bright auburn hair she had and a soft white skin. Ortho, whose last three little affairs had been pronounced brunettes, turned to her with a refreshened eye, wondering what had made him leave her. She was dancing a square dance with her faithful swain, Tom Trevaskis, when Ortho entered, circling and curtseying happily to the music of four fiddles led by Jiggy Dan.